Roger Clarke’s Dataveillance and Information Privacy Home-Page

This segment of the site provides access to papers that I've published in the
broad area of privacy and dataveillance, since the 1970s. Dataveillance is the
systematic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of
the actions or communications of one or more persons. I coined the term in 1986,
as a contraction of 'data surveillance', and published an analysis of the concept
in Clarke (1988).

My early work, from the mid-1980s, was specifically in the then new field of
Dataveillance (a term that I coined). I later extended my work into surveillance
more generally, and into specific, new forms that have become rampant and that
lacked (and still lack) adequate controls.

(1) Privacy

Surveillance inevitably threatens the human value of privacy. Privacy is a
complex notion that is still poorly understood, so it's been necessary to publish
a
number of papers on the concept. Of greatest importance is the need to get
beyond the narrow notion of 'data privacy' – which is all that 'data protection
laws' address. The additional dimensions that I use are:

(4) Dataveillance

I coined 'dataveillance' in the mid-1980s. The purpose was to draw attention
to the substantial shift that was occurring from (expensive) physical and electronic
surveillance of individuals to (cheap) surveillance of people's behaviour through
the increasingly intensive data trails that their behaviour was generating.
I've created a dozen or so neologisms, but dataveillance is far and away the
most successful of them, making it into dictionaries by 2009. See also Wordspy,
2001.

The base for my extensive work in this area was laid in a paper entitled 'Information
Technology and Dataveillance' (1988, published in a major US journal).
Physical and electronically enhanced monitoring of individuals and groups
is expensive. The paper shows how information technology is enabling those
old techniques to be replaced by highly automated, and therefore much cheaper,
systematic observation of data about people. This new form of monitoring,
whose descriptor I abbreviated to 'dataveillance', is potentially highly
privacy-invasive. I later reviewed progress, in Dataveillance
- 15 Years On (2003).

A second paper, 'Human Identification in Information
Systems: Management Challenges and Public Policy Issues' (1994, published
in a leading international journal), further develops a vital aspect of the
argument: the nature of human identification as it is applied within information
systems. Remarkably, there are very few works in any academic literature
which address the question of such uses of human identity, and for this reason
the paper had a long gestation period (from 1985 until 1994).

The paper 'The Digital Persona and Its Application
to Data Surveillance' (1994, published in a leading international journal)
introduced a new concept, the 'digital persona', as a tool in the analysis
of behaviour on the 'net. It applies the tool, together with data surveillance
theory, to predict the monitoring of the 'real-life' behaviour of individuals
and groups through their net behaviour. The concept of 'nym' is related to
(but not identical to) what I mean by 'digital persona'. Nyms are addressed
in the following section. Progress with the concept was reviewed in Promise
Unfulfilled: The Digital Persona Concept, Two Decades Later (2014).

The following two are less pretentious than the above papers, but they contain
some important ideas:

(5) Electronic Surveillance

By Electronic Surveillance is meant the monitoring of people's interactions,
behaviour and social networks through their communications over electronic
networks, with other individuals, devices and databases. See:

An early paper, 'Database Retrieval Technology and Subject Access
Principles' (1984; with Graham Greenleaf, published in the Australian
Computer Journal, but not available on the web), is concerned with data retrieval
technology. It examines the scope for a particular form of database technology
to render impractical an established privacy-protective mechanism, the so-called
'subject access principle'. This case study exemplifies the way in which developments
in information technology undermine privacy protection laws. It provides a basis
for understanding the impact of other developments, such as 'reverse access'
to telephone directories, monitoring of energy usage, textual analysis, 'data
mining', and the discovery of individual characteristics through the analysis
of seemingly anonymous, statistical collections.

the second paper, 'Computer Matching by Government
Agencies: The Failure of Cost/Benefit Analysis as a Control Mechanism'
(1995) examines the mechanisms that prevent unjustifiably privacy-invasive
matching from being undertaken, and ensure that suitable protections are incorporated
into such programs as do proceed. It includes a detailed examination of the
use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to justify matching programs, and a review
of the extent to which CBA has functioned as an effective control over misuse
and abuse of computer matching in the United States and Australia. Its conclusion
is that there are serious inadequacies in the controls over computer matching;

the third paper, 'A Normative Regulatory Framework
for Computer Matching' (1995) proposes a set of general and specific regulatory
measures that it is argued are necessary if society is to bring government
matching programs under control. It assesses the limited regulatory regimes
of the United States and Australia against those proposals, and finds them
seriously wanting;

I was active in the original W3C Working Group on P3P (Platform for
Privacy Preferences). Unfortunately, the initiative fell so far short
of its aspirations that it is not worthy of the name 'PET'. All of the following
appeared in Privacy Law & Policy Reporter:

2. Organisational Strategy, Policy, Practice

In the 1970s, government agencies and corporations resisted calls for privacy
protections. During the intervening decades, many of them have come to recognise
privacy as a factor that can harm their business, and that therefore needs to
be addressed in a positive manner.

I have performed many consultancy assignments in this area during the last
two decades. This section identifies published papers that are addressed specifically
to business enterprises and government agencies, firstly in matters of general
strategic significance, and secondly in the specific area of privacy impact
assessments (PIAs).

I've performed a considerable number of consultancies in this area (see client
list). Important among them have been the preparation of guidelines for
the performance of PIAs (1998), the review of guidelines prepared by government
agencies (1999, 2006), research reports on PIA laws, policies and practices
in the Asia-Pacific (2007), lead-authorship in the drafting of the UK Information
Commissioner's PIA Handbook (2007), and training materials for the Hong Kong
Privacy Commissioner's staff (2010).

A Privacy Policy Statement (PPS) is a web-page that makes statements about
the web-site owner's privacy policies. The device is talked about by business
and government as if the concept mattered, even though its significance is very
low. Nonetheless, some guidance is provided in:

3.
Public Policy

It is widely claimed that information technology is becoming pervasive, and
is giving rise to an 'information economy' and an 'information society'. If
that is the case, then its impacts will be substantial, and must be managed.
This part of my collection of papers is concerned with public policy regarding
dataveillance.

Yet another is the mindless enthusiasm for biometrics that
has arisen as a result of the dominance of 'national security' over both civil
liberties and logic, aided and abetted by fraudulent representations by technology
providers. A specific critique is at:

'Impact on Practitioners of the Australian Law Reform Commission's Information
Privacy Proposals' (1985, in the Australian Computer Journal, not currently
available on the web);

'A Critique of the Australian Law Reform Commission's Information Privacy
Proposals' (1986; with Graham Greenleaf; in an international journal of law
and computers, not currently available on the web).

A paper entitled 'Economic, Legal and Social Implications
of Information Technology' (1988, published as an 'Issues and Opinions'
piece in a leading US journal) provides a discussion of the ethics of academic
endeavour in the information systems discipline. It argues that information
technology's impacts are so great that detached observation is an inadequate
stance for an information systems academic.

Information systems researchers must engage themselves in their subject-matter,
and extend themselves beyond mere description and explanation, and even beyond
the prediction of the outcomes of artefact design and interventions in organisations
and society. Information systems researchers are irretrievably involved in the
process of engineering organisations and society, and cannot meaningfully sustain
the pretext that they are entirely uninterested in, and unaffected by, the processes
around them. These issues are examined in 'Data Surveillance:
Theory, Practice and Policy' (July 1997). That paper argues that policy
issues in general, and information privacy in particular, are not only an appropriate
area of focus for information systems researchers, but that they are also capable
being approached in a sufficiently disciplined manner.

Like other technologies, computing and telecommunications are capable of being
applied to the benefit of humanity as a whole, or of particular interest groups
within society. Use of information technology by the politically powerful as
a means of exercising control over the thoughts and actions of members of the
public, is a matter of especial concern to those living in democracies.

A paper entitled 'Information Technology: Weapon
of Authoritarianism or Tool of Democracy?' (1994; presented at the World
Congress of computing academics) identifies critical implications of information
technology for democracies. It represented a response to a paper submitted to
the conference by a senior government executive of a country that had previously
been dominated by the U.S.S.R., and that has no tradition of democracy as it
is known in 'western' countries.

This paper's importance is that it lifts the application of the theory of
dataveillance from the individual and social levels to the political level,
and is a first, tentative step toward the building of a bridge between the theory
of dataveillance (developed, as it has been, largely from within the information
systems discipline), towards broader theories arising in anthropology, sociology
and political science.

Other papers that consider broader issues related to dataveillance include:

Papers on National Identification schemes generally are in a
separate section, above. This section addresses the specifics of the ongoing
attempts by executives in Australian government agencies and Australian politicians
to implement extremist social control mechanisms in this country.

(1) The Australia Card, Mark I – 1985-87

During the period 1985-87, the Commonwealth Government
developed a proposal to implement a central database of the Australian population,
whose
purpose,
expressed in terms of the theory developed in this body of work, was the facilitation
of dataveillance of all residents of this country. 'Just
Another Piece of Plastic for Your Wallet: The Australia Card' (1987,
published in an international technology policy journal) provides a carefully
documented
description and analysis of the proposal, a distillation of the issues, and
a political history of the proposal's development and ultimate fate.

Another paper on the topic was 'National Identification Scheme - Costs and
Benefits' (1986, published in an Australian journal).

Although the Australia Card proposal was withdrawn in the face of dramatically
negative public opinion, the momentum that dataveillance applications of information
technology had attained within the Commonwealth public sector was scarcely affected.
'The Resistible Rise of the National Personal Data System'
(1992, published in an American journal of computers and law) documents a number
of developments during the following three years. It is primarily a political
history, expressed within the context set by the theory of dataveillance.

During the 1990s, bureaucrats achieved merger of all government benefits schemes,
and correlation of identifiers, by means of Centrelink. Despite resistance going
back 15 years, they eventually succeeded in combining the health insurance and
pharmaceutical benefits schemes in to a single agency. Then in the early 2000s,
the centralist's dream of a 'super-ministry' was achieved, euphemistically called
Human Services, which enable the benefit schemes, health systems and child support
agency to be drawn even closer together.

(3) Australia Card, Mark II – 2005-06

Then in mid-2005, the Queensland Premier Beattie, in an endeavour to shift
media attention away from serious problems in his State, suggested that an Australia
Card was needed. The Prime Minister ran with it. A cluster of identity schemes
was progressively drawn into one being developed by the 'Human Services' Minister
dubbed the Access Card.

Advocacy groups and the media have caused a great deal of pertrubation in the
statements made by politicians and bureaucrats about the scheme. The resolve
with which it is being pursued by the Government appears set to bring down another
Minister in due course.

Documentation about the schemes, the continual changes in Government pronouncements,
and the privacy advocacy campaigns, is at:

This series of attempts by the bureaucracy supported by extremist elements
behind and within the Liberal Party, failed. (Even the reactionary Attorney-General
Phillip Ruddock, didn't have the stomach for it). An opportunist Minister,
Joe Hockey, offered to dress the proposal up differently, leading to ...

(4) Australia Card, Mark III – The Access Card – 2006-07

It collapsed. The APF had ensured that the media were well-informed. But,
significantly, the proximate cause of the collapse was that rarity,
a Senate Committee Chair (i.e. a Government member, not
yet a Minister,
but on
the
rise),
whose Report comprehensively debunked it. (The Chair was Queensland Liberal
Senator Brett Mason, whose PhD thesis and book had been highly uncomplimentary
about privacy advocates).

A paper on 'Consumer Credit Reporting and Information
Privacy Regulation', summarised the situation in the lead-up to the 1989
extensions to the Privacy Act (1989). The resultant legislation was described
in 'Privacy Regulation of Consumer Credit Reporting' (June 1989, published in
an Australian journal, not available on the web).

The disastrously bad amendment Bill of 2000 was analysed and severely criticised:

During 1972-75, several papers were prepared on behalf of the N.S.W. Branch
of the Australian Computer Society. At that time, it appeared that the N.S.W.
Government might push through privacy protection legislation that could have
been harmful to the then immature computer industry. I led the professional
association's lobbying against unreasonable regulation. I was too successful:
N.S.W. passed no substantive law until 1998, and then came up with what was
until December 2000 the world's worst privacy protection legislation ...

The content and infrastructure for these community service pages are provided by Roger Clarke through his consultancy company, Xamax.

From the site's beginnings in August 1994 until February 2009, the infrastructure was provided by the Australian National University. During that time, the site accumulated close to 30 million hits. It passed 50 million in early 2015.